


and the mist could never blush so deeply

by whatwonderfuldays



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, haru can drive, haru knows his constellations, haru's car has a starring role (kinda), shoutout to haru's car, the author doesn't know her constellations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 11:38:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14617638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatwonderfuldays/pseuds/whatwonderfuldays
Summary: for the fluff friday event. Haru picks Rin up from the airport, and he can't contain himself. there is a car that is Definitely Used For Driving (I promise)





	and the mist could never blush so deeply

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so I've become ridiculously accustomed to writing poetry again - good and bad. this is the result of some late-night decision to throw a few attempts at writing neat metaphors onto the page. I hope you enjoy ^^

  


Rin blinks, as does Haruka’s indicator, as does the now looming gas station signpost, and fidgets in his seat— cold, plush relief against clammy skin. He gulps down another dose of night air spiked with tension until he’s pretty sure it’ll get him drunk.

  
  


Haruka parks the car in the car park of a sleepy service station, ever squinting and fumbling for certain buttons. _Like a dove with clipped wings_ , Rin thinks, unsettled by the rigid edge to Haruka’s ministrations. Driving is hard, but watching him is almost harder.

  
  


It’s then that Haruka looks to Rin, and suddenly Rin is the dove — with wings perfectly intact, for a smile so endearingly practiced is one so fit for flight. It raises the apples of Haruka’s cheeks and flutters in a misplaced twinkle in his eyes; one that shouldn’t be so potent and ablaze when night is swallowing the land.

  
  


“Haru…” Rin says, lips cradling the word with every ounce of care. Not leaning in would be a crime Rin doesn’t want to find himself committing.

  


_But_ …

  


A cold breeze assaults all of Rin’s senses when the car door swings open beside him, revealing the form of one Nanase Haruka, all trackies and trainers and hair an inky tousle courtesy of his car seat. Some expectant gaze settles itself upon Rin, slips to the chap in the pink of his mouth and lifts at once to find solace in the clouds drinking the sky.

  
  


Rin, as if on autopilot, steps out of the car, a helpless mirror of the giddy smile Haruka seems to be unable to shake.

  
  


“It’s like the ocean, Rin,” Haruka murmurs, clasping his fingers around Rin’s wrist to guide the point of his finger to a cluster of stars, “ _Delphinus_.”

  
  


“ _Mm_ ,” Rin hums, feeling his hip brush with Haruka’s once he allows his trembling weight to shift to the shell of the car. It is then he regrets and rejoices all at once, for Haruka’s head nuzzles - _nuzzles_ , for Christ’s sake - into the sleek passage between neck and shoulder.

  


There is so much Rin wants to say — so much that has already been said. A weekly Skype call would merely mock the affluence of what conversation they would hold with a single look or calculated touch or - _God forbid_ \- prolonged embrace, not unlike how Haruka’s fingers now seek purchase in the fabric of Rin’s hoodie, head slipping to the crest of his collarbone and chest pressed flush to another.

  
  


Because now, though floating outside of a trembling frame, Rin too buries his nose in the juncture between trap and _broad_ shoulder, hands coming to settle on the small of Haruka’s back with an equally matched insistence. He barely pinches back a sneeze brought on by the tickle of black hair teasing at his nose.

  
  


“ _Rin_ ,” Haru says, muffled by Rin’s shirt, “let’s … ‘s _cold_ , Rin.”

  


With an empty chuckle – _surely_ that was the same tone Haruka used in high school when he’d whine about Rin’s inexperience as an English tutor – Rin pulls back, slowly enough that his nose teases at the tip of Haru’s— _close_.

  


Haruka’s eyes blink up at Rin’s, sheathed in the night’s thick haze and curtains of flickering black.

  


 

“Let’s — Let’s get in the car, Haru,” Rin says, with, quite evidently, little intention of putting key to engine and rubber to tarmac.

  
  


Haruka closes the door to the back seats, and shuffles closer to Rin.

  
  


It’s a start.

  
  


“ _Rin_ …” Haruka repeats, a tone of reverence still biting at his words and gnawing at Rin’s heart. “You’re … you’re so...”

  
  


“Haru,” Rin whispers, hand firm on Haruka’s hipbone, “ _Haru_. I—”

  
  


His words are lost to his Haru’s lips, and Rin is pressing back as if it’s his birthday again, mind all distant flickers of tentative touches and the sweet musty scent of Haruka’s bedroom —

  
  


— but this time, Rin recognises, it is a happening without expertise, as it had been then — though newly punctuated with desire pink and fiery burning between them. _Familiar_ , maybe, but previously untouched; Rin presses further into it, further into Haruka.

  
  


Fitting a hand to Rin’s jaw – and for Christ’s sake even _that_ of all things strikes him as gorgeous – Haruka pulls back, breathing against Rin’s parted lips and allowing their foreheads to meet comfortably. Rin’s skin, Haruka notes, is alabasterly pale, and almost likens itself to the mist settled upon the car window behind them both; though in every manner it is far from misty and temporary and thinning, for even in fleeting whispers of moonlight singing to the car’s silence, he glows.

  
  


… and the mist on his windows, by all laws of nature, could never blush so deeply, Haru adds, lips barely grazing over the rose-red dappling Rin’s cheeks.

  
  


He smiles, and Rin smiles too, nose wrinkling beneath feather-light kisses.

  



End file.
